When he's not bashing out an EVOL-y noise with Lifeguard, Kai Slater fronts Sharp Pins, his own project. That band has the market cornered on a kind of Beatles/Soft Boys/Tall Dwarfs-inspired brand of DIY pop. And the results on Balloon Balloon Balloon, out this Friday, make up some of the most pleasureable listening of the year.
Opener "Popafangout" is pure Guided By Voices circa 1994, while "I Don't Have the Heart" marries a mid-Sixties Fab Four-style hook with the kind of whimsical pop attack that fueled all the best early Elephant 6 stuff. Elsewhere, "I Could Find Out", like many numbers here, sounds remarkably like Temple Songs/The Foetals, two Manchester bands I've championed a lot on this site. The sublime "Queen of Globes and Mirrors" channels Robyn Hitchcock channeling John Lennon. It's lovely, folks. The same goes for the Paisley Underground-leaning "(In a While) You'll Be Mine" later on the record.
Kai Slater covers a lot of territory on this long-player. There are more than 20 songs here in only about 45 minutes. And while this isn't the punchy attack of Robert Pollard and crew, there's still a ton of inventiveness at work here. Clearly, Slater has an awesome record collection. Remarkably, he's able to translate his obvious love for certain artists into music that chimes and jangles in all the right ways. Balloon Balloon Balloon is a tremendously enjoyable record, and proof that pretty soon folks might be calling Lifeguard "that band with the guy from Sharp Pins"!
Balloon Balloon Balloon by Sharp Pins is out on Friday via perennialdeath. Details below via Bandcamp.
[Photo: Sharp Pins]